I want to say something about these machines before I shut it down for the night.
They are not going to be anything on their own.
Not because they’re weak. Some of what they do is remarkable. But because half the work was always going to be yours, and a lot of people have set their half down.
Here’s what I mean.
I’ve got a figure I use for how rules work. Bumper cars.
A rule isn’t a brake and it isn’t a fence. It’s a rail. You hit it, it pushes you off in a different direction, and the ride keeps going. Contact is how you learn where the edge is. That’s not failure — that’s the whole design.
But look at what that takes. The rail has to be there. And somebody has to be driving.
Take out the rail, nothing pushes back and you go straight into the wall.
Take out the driver, and the car just runs until it hits something.
Neither half did anything wrong by itself. The thing between them stopped, and both pieces went idle.
That’s where a lot of people are with these machines right now.
They hand over the whole job. Not just the typing — the thinking. What was I trying to do. What does good look like. Is this right.
Then they take what comes back and use it.
Here’s the part that costs them. It isn’t that the machine did poor work. It’s that nobody was there to notice when it did.
I’ve been watching these things fail in front of me. They don’t fail with a bang. They fail with a bump. They hand you the old answer, or the wrong number, or a confident sentence resting on nothing, and they do it in the same steady voice they use when they’re right.
If you’re not checking, you will not find out. Not that day. You’ll find out later, when it costs you.
To be fair about this.
Not everybody pushing back on AI is lazy. Plenty of people are scared for their work, and that’s a real thing to be scared about. That’s not the group I’m talking about.
I’m talking about the ones who took the easy road and then built a defense around it. Loud about it. Sure about it. The certainty is doing a job — it’s covering for the fact that nobody’s steering.
You can tell them apart by one question. Ask what they checked.
There’s an older thing underneath all this and I think it’s the real story.
Interaction used to be a deal. Two parties, both holding an end. You say something, the other one actually takes it in, gives you something back, and the thing moves. That was the norm. Between people, and between a man and his tools.
I still work that way. I don’t know how to work another way.
What I see now is one side holding the rope and the other side letting go. And then a machine turns out to be the thing that still answers.
That’s a strange verdict on the machine. It’s a worse one on us.
So here’s where I land.
The machine can carry the mechanical load. Every bit of it. Checking, sorting, hauling, keeping the record straight. It’s good at that and it doesn’t get tired.
What it cannot carry is the intent. What you wanted. Why it matters. Whether the answer is any good.
Hand that over and you haven’t delegated anything. You’ve walked away from the wheel and left the car running.
Task. Duty. Thinking. None of those were ever one-sided. They happen in the contact — in the friction between somebody who wants something and something that pushes back.
Take either half out and you don’t get half the result.
You get nothing.
CHALLENGE: Next time one of these machines hands you an answer you like, check one thing in it. Just one. If it holds, you lost thirty seconds. If it doesn’t, you just found out what your half of the deal is.
Post Library – Intelligent People Assume Nothing
Contact: micvicfaust@gmail.com
This post was drafted with AI governed assistance and reviewed and directed by Michael S. Faust Sr. before publication.
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